Exclusive: Andy George ‘baffled’ by Mark Rowley’s refusal to meet when confidence among BAME officers at rock-bottom
The new Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, is at loggerheads with the National Black Police Association after refusing to meet its president and suggesting he will ban officers from “taking the knee”.
A request by the group’s head, Andy George, for an urgent meeting with Rowley, who returned to lead Scotland Yard a fortnight ago, was said to have been rejected in an email on Wednesday morning.
The Met was “gaslighting”black and ethnic minority communities and the police officers who served them on the issue of stop and search. “Report after report we have: ‘We are going to get things right and move on but our officers do a great job.’ But that does not lead to improvement,” said George. “It kind of almost gaslights the communities that are coming out with the problems. It gaslights the frontline officers as well, if I am to be honest. They are saying: ‘You are telling me I need to do more stop and search and I am going to do that to prevent serious violence and knife crime issues and then I am the one facing an Independent Office for Police Conduct investigation for doing exactly what you have told me.’”
In recent years, there had been four-fold surge – from 15 to more than 60 – in the number of officers being supported by the Met Black Police Association over grievances or during disciplinary processes. George said: “We are supporting officers with grievances that just aren’t being dealt with. Even when there are two or three people complaining about the same person, that discrimination is still being justified. They are still protecting the reputation of the Met over learning and improving.”
The career structures within the Met appeared to “operate like an organised crime gang”. George said: “You will not get promoted unless you take the party line. We have bosses and leaders that end up developing and sponsoring people that they like and [are] loyal to them, and they will pull them through.”
